Let Go
by Ellenka
Summary: ... or don't. Because two wrongs don't make a right, but who cares. Not me, not while I can still hold you.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Umm hi. I'm alive &amp; braindead, but I decided to write a little something just to make myself feel better. Set in CF-movie verse - in the infamous flashback scene that annoys the hell outta me.

I don't own anything THG related (it would look hella different if I did).

* * *

**Flash Back**

"Let go! Let go!"

It takes me a moment to realize that the voice screaming is my own. Shrill with horror nestled deep in my subconscious and emerging, unbidden, at the worst of times. My empty bow clatters to the frozen ground as my arms flail about, fighting off the hands reaching for me. They don't desist, but don't hurt me either, their touch firm but gentle. Accompanied by words, gruff but soothing.

"It's okay. You are here with me."

I know the voice, know the hands, I should be able to recognize them anywhere. The reassuring familiarity slowly seeps through the haze of shock, my breaths deepen, eyes focus on what's real.

"Okay... With me."

With my friend. Home. In our woods. It's okay. It should be okay.

My hands are still shaking, my heart trembling in its cage, my soul shivering with chill that has nothing to do with the winter.

It's not okay, and I have no strength to pretend otherwise. That wouldn't work anyway, not after I lost it while shooting at a stupid turkey.

I saw different blood pouring from the wound, a different body hit the ground.

But Gale didn't, and he's staring at me, eyes wide and worried under furrowed brows, lips parted in a silent question. Few snowflakes nestled in the mess of his black hair, cheeks flushed by the biting cold.

I know him.

I'm here with him. But I'm not exactly the Katniss he used to know, damn it, not exactly the Katniss _I_ used to know, and neither of us knows how to salvage what's been broken.

Gale's hands are still gripping my arms, holding me steady. "Tell me what's wrong?"

I open my mouth to speak but no words come out, a noose woven from everything I want to forget chokes them in my throat.

I should say something, anything, to deflect the question, to play it cool. Avoiding the topic forever would be preferable, but I don't even know how to say _that_, and we both already know it's not quite working out. A gap is open between us like a wound, so far bandaged by attempts at old banter but untreated in the depths where it's truly dangerous. If it were to heal, something has to grow back, new and slightly different, but rooted in the old. A scar.

"Okay, I know _what_'s wrong," Gale continues, voice laced with frustration, "I've seen it alright. But that's not all. I don't know what it's done to you. Keeps doing. Dammit, Catnip, I don't know what you are thinking anymore."

Shaking my head, I choke out, "Sometimes, I don't know either. I don't even want to know."

"I don't know how to have your back through this," he says, softer now, but somehow more insistent, his eyes burning into mine, searching for answers I can't put into words. "Tell me? If you even want me to?"

"Yeah, but I..." I close my eyes to avoid his gaze. I can't bear how he holds me at arm's length, demanding answers, and struggle until he loosens his hold.

Even though I think I'd planned it, I don't escape when he does, but dive between his arms instead, closer, hiding my face against his chest, my fingers curling into his coat just in case he wanted to pry me away. He doesn't, though. Even through a sharp, surprised intake of breath, his body reacts to accommodate mine, arms wrapping around me, cradling my shoulders and head.

"Just let me know how to help you. Tell me. Show me. Whatever you want," he whispers into my hair.

"I just... I just want to forget," I mutter into his shirt. "Everything, I guess. But it's way too much. Too much has happened."

Too much has happened since he'd held me like this for the last time, but I recall it more vividly as he seeps into my senses: the scent of his skin, the rhythm of his breath, the beat of his heart. Too much has happened since I promised Prim I'll win for her, since Gale tried to tell me that the cost would be less than it turned out to be and I almost believed him. "Now I know what the difference is," I choke out.

"Yeah," he breathes. He knows what I'm talking about, he remembers too.

I shake my head against him, frantically. "No, no, you can't say that."

Gale wasn't there, he doesn't quite understand, doesn't quite _know_, but would I even wish the knowledge upon him?

No. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

"I'm sorry, Catnip." He strokes my hair, slowly, soothingly, and I feel tears begin to fall in tune with the motion. Softly like rain at first, a trickle through a cracked dam that's been holding too long. I couldn't cry in front of the audiences, I had to play a good little Victor for, not in front of mom and Prim I wanted to be strong and happy for... not in front of Peeta, because how could I burden him with my feelings after basically rejecting his?

I didn't want to break down in front of Gale either, after all I've done that only once before, over an experience we'd shared. But the storm I've been carrying in me is too much to hold all by myself now, and I let it out, tears mixing with words I couldn't and shouldn't say anywhere near other ears.

It's okay here. I'm home with my best friend.

And I don't want to let that go.


	2. Chapter 2

**Flash Forward**

Next time we meet, I even don't even bother to start with hunting. I have more than enough time for that during the week.

Gale doesn't, but he nods silently when I say we could just check the snare line on the way back, and follows where I lead him.

I don't want to risk any episodes along the way, or to touch anything dead.

The journey is long, longer than we've ever taken together. Gale raises his eyebrows questioningly every time I look back to check on him, but I just beckon him further.

Though I get to be in his company only once a week, I slip into our old familiar rhythm as if it were a well worn shoe. I'm not as relaxed as I used to be before the games, I don't know if can ever return to that, but feeling his presence at my back eases my worries. It's easier to believe there are no cameras in the trees, no mutt or human enemies waiting in ambush. No bloodied ghosts lurking below my eyelids.

Gale wasn't there and doesn't know how it is to doubt the obvious every step on the way, but that also means they haven't seen him, that I don't have to doubt him. He doesn't belong to them, only to me.

Now I'm taking him to a place that belongs only to me as well, just because too late feels better than never, and I want to get as far away from the district as possible.

By the time we arrive to my destination - a tiny concrete house near a lake, the only standing remnant of an old settlement from before the Dark Days - Gale looks more frustrated than anything else, but that quickly gives way to wonder.

"Why haven't we been here before?" he asks, quietly, taking in the expanse of frozen water bounded with trees and ruins mostly reclaimed by nature, all except the last building standing. Certainly thinking about the people who lived here. Imagining _us_ living here in peace if we'd only run away.

I'm taking the scenery on too, both disconcerted and comforted by how little has changed in the years since my last visit. That was with my father, and I'd been reluctant to take Gale here even as we grew closer. I take a deep breath before answering. "I've been meaning to take you here. It's just that... no time felt exactly right. And then it was too late."

Gale looks at me for a long moment, and then shakes his head. "Yeah, hate when that happens."

I frown. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing. C'mon, let's get warm." He lays a light hand on my shoulder and steers me toward the house.

The interior looks the same too, down to the undisturbed pile of dried wood neatly stacked in one corner. Father liked to say we'd collect it slowly and use it all one day, when we come here all together with Prim and mom, and make a big bonfire. The whole family. We never got around to that, and then it was too late.

Now I use a part of it to build a sparse fire for Gale and I, to warm us up after the long hike and to heat the small meal I'd brought along.

We prepare it together, quick and efficient, occasionally brushing each other's fingers in the haste. Then we settle on opposite sides of the fire, the silence between us loaded with new and unspoken things, but not unpleasantly heavy. It's comforting, but I'm the first to break it, muttering a question that's been floating in my mind for months. Now it bobbed so close to the surface I suddenly realized that I can still find out the answer.

"What is it that you wanted me to remember?"

Gale looks up sharply. "When?"

"When we were saying… goodbye. You told me to remember something."

Gale avoids my eyes and gazes back into the tiny fire flickering between us. He's been fidgeting with a piece of wrapping string, tying and untying delicate knots, and I've been watching his fingers, mesmerized by the precise movements. Now he chucks the last finished knot into the fire, sending sparks into the air. "Guess it doesn't matter anymore. Never been quite sure you'd want to hear it, and now..." He shakes his head.

I watch him as the fire settles, the reflected flames dancing in his pupils, the shadows etching the sharp lines of his face and the bitter set of his jaw. "Why not? I'm back. If you really wanted me to remember something, why wouldn't it matter now?"

He considers it for a moment, and then gives me a slight _nothing-to-lose_ shrug. "If you really want to hear it..." He looks straight into my eyes. "I wanted you to remember I love you, Katniss. I still do."

"Oh. I..."

He's waiting for me to react, and I jump to my feet, the information somehow too much to be contained in a still body. It feels like many things, enough to push the air from my lungs, but doesn't really feel like _news_. More like a glimpse beyond a door that's been open for a time, I just always passed it without noticing.

Gale had mirrored my movements, perhaps to catch me if I decided to make a run for it, and captures my wrist. "I should have told you earlier," he admits softly. "Or accepted that I'll never get to do it… You know… I've been too damn sure it was gonna be me this year. I wanted to know I had at least myself to offer before telling you. But then it was you... and it was too late." He shakes his head. "Would it have changed anything?"

I'm stubbornly looking away. "I don't know. Maybe it was better that way. With you not telling me." I was fumbling in the arena enough as it was, and my survival depended on the performance. And Peeta's too.

Gale releases my hand. "Maybe I should have volunteered after all," he mutters bitterly, turning away. "We'd have pulled it off better. The baker's kid would have kept his leg and all. And we wouldn't be in this mess now."

"No!" I exclaim before I can stop myself. We both know that, but I still feel the need to say it, to reassure us. I'd carried a part of Gale with me anyway, hidden in my heart and in my mind, even without a spoken confession to remember. "No." Gale whirls around, his mouth opened to say something, his frown deepening, but I hold my hand up to stop him. "There was no way of knowing they'd let two people win. No way to count on it."

I take a deep breath and try not to think of what I'd have been going through if it were Gale risking _everything_ on the TV screen, and me the one watching, unable to help . "Gale, you saw everything I've done there. What I risked to beat the game, at least as much as I could. I _needed_ to get both of us out. Trust me, it would have been worse if it didn't work out this way. But I... I don't think I would have gone that far without knowing _you_ are here to take care of Prim, forever, whatever happened to me. If it wasn't for you, I guess... I wouldn't have been able to... afford to think like that."

My fingers have locked around his wrist and I can feel the muscles there relaxing with my words. A light tug brings him back, closer. He reaches for me, carefully, smoothing his hand over my jacket and letting it rest on the small of my back. Welcoming the reprieve, I lean closer and press my face against his chest, hiding. "And I couldn't stand it if they watched _us_," I mutter. "I don't even want to talk about it here. I'm back. Well, or whatever's left of me is. Back with you, and I..." My voice falters. I can't bring myself to say the three words back. But I can't let Gale go either, something in me is so full of him, so full of everything we've been together I don't even want to know what would be left if I lost it. I hold onto him, clenching my fingers into his shirt, right over his heart, willing him to understand how essential he's been to me. Is. Will be, always.

"You're back and you still have me," he says. "If you don't want me to tell you again, I won't, but it's still true. Whatever happens. Remember it now, okay?"

"Okay." I nod into his shirt, burying my nose in the worn fabric, breathing him in.

Gale doesn't try to talk anymore, but touches me instead, his fingers tracing the pattern of my braid, lightly kneading the tense muscles in my neck, brushing the sides of my face as he smooths my hair.

Relaxing, I uncurl my fists, letting my hands splay against his chest and pull away a little, letting him cup my face in his palms.

I have seen his hands doing many things - setting snares, skinning game, gesticulating wildly as he traded or argued at the Hob... ruffling his brothers' hair or holding his little sister, easily encasing her tiny torso in his palms. Felt them too, as he squeezed my knee or my shoulder, rubbed my hands to warm them up in winter, or let the backs of his fingers linger against my cheek for a split of a second after tucking stray hair behind my ear. I've never bothered to think much of the light tingles I'd felt then, I just took them as a natural part of being with Gale, of being alive.

The nature of my awareness seems to have changed now, it's more acute and underlined with anticipation. I savor his touch beyond need or reason, allowing myself to want it. My mouth parts reflexively when he brushes the edge of my lower lip with his thumb, the touch sending a shiver to my core. His lips are in my hair, on my forehead, caressing my cheeks and tasting a few stray tears. Whispering words that mean no more and no less than the bursts of air against my skin. Close, but not close enough, because now that I know what a kiss feels like, it seems preposterous not to know what _Gale's _kiss feels like.

I could have died not knowing, and now that I survived, I've been hurled into a new life where I shouldn't even want to know.

But I do.

We aren't supposed to be madly in love, we aren't supposed to be in love at all, but I reach up and take the first real kiss. My lips hit his with an uncertain, artless smack, my thumbs pressed tight in the deep hollows under his cheekbones. He breathes a laugh when I pull away, wry and sad, but his lips are back on mine before I can think about it. Slow, patient, and never breaking contact, coaxing mine to adopt their rhythm. I do, because it feels right anyway, close my eyes tightly and kiss him, harder every time. Giving and taking what I can, making up for every kiss that could have been but wasn't, for all the kisses that will never be.

This stolen day might well be all we have, and every cell in my body is screaming that I haven't touched Gale nearly enough. That no amount of touching will ever be enough. I push his open jacket off his shoulders and rake my hands all over his torso, tracing muscles and counting ribs through his thin shirt. His body had no softness for the mines to steal, but the edges still feel harder now, harder than when he'd held me before the games. The realization that I'd ever held him properly only to say goodbye suddenly makes me angry. So does the thought that complete strangers have touched me where Gale hadn't. I take the anger out on him, baring his skin and clawing at it as if I wanted to dig my way into his ribcage and sulk there forever.

Gale reciprocates in kind, squeezing me closer, his open mouth slipping along my jaw and down my neck. Pulling away for a moment, breathing heavily against my lips as he seeks affirmation. I have no idea what exactly to say or how to say it, all I know is that what I want has so much to do with the warmth of his body, the scent of his skin, the thrill of his touch. With everything he makes me feel, with everything he makes me forget. We've been too slow and it turned out all wrong, now everything is going too fast and that's wrong as well, but what can we do, with our time already up?

So I just nod and surrender to the feeling, letting everything else go.


End file.
